Baking bread makes dough to save home

Unemployed, woman turns to kitchen to stop foreclosure

Cecilia Matos bakes bread with the help of her friend Maria Aguiar of Potomac to help raise money to save her Clarksburg home. Matos owes the bank $15,000.

Cecilia Matos didn't miss a monthly mortgage payment on her townhouse for seven years until she lost her job and $90,000 salary more than a year ago.

Threatened with foreclosure, she turned to bread to raise some dough to save her home.

Matos, 53, a single mother and college student, started baking variations of banana bread and selling it to her friends in late October to raise money for her 30-year, $328,000 mortgage. She owes the bank $15,000 in late fees and other charges by Jan. 15, she said. Longtime friend Maria Aguiar, 52, of Potomac told Matos, a former clinical auditor for a clinical research company, that she should sell more of the bread.

Aguiar came up with the name "Hope's Bread," hopeful that the bread would bring in money to save Matos' home.

In three weeks, Matos made $1,200 selling bread, enough to cover November's mortgage payment. The bread sells for $5 for a small loaf and $9 for a large.

Matos, now a freshman majoring in gerontology at the University of Maryland, University College, is trying to keep her Clarksburg home and rent it out. She plans to take a break from baking soon to look for a place to live in Boston, where she will begin a job with a medical research company in mid-January and continue her studies online.

The rich, fruity aroma of the breads  banana bread, banana bread with apples, banana bread with pumpkin, banana bread with chocolate chips, banana bread with dried cranberries  filled the home like a bustling bakery.

Aguiar, a clinical researcher who was laid off a year ago from a company in Rockville, said she enjoys helping Matos save her home.

"She had a good salary and she was able to afford the house," Aguiar said. "I couldn't sleep at night after she told me about her situation."

Matos didn't tell many people that she had depleted her 401K and savings accounts paying bills, but she did tell her daughter Rachel Rosa. Rosa, 18, a freshman majoring in elementary education at Marymount University in Arlington, Va., started working 15 hours a week to help with bills.

As Matos inched further into debt, Rosa picked up more hours with the child care company in the summer to help put food on the table.

"Sometimes we had to live off of her salary," Matos said, staring out of a window in her kitchen. "I never thought that would happen."

Rosa said she felt the need to help the woman she idolizes.

"She didn't want me to get the job, but when I saw the pain and struggle on her face, I had to help my mom," Rosa said.

Now, mother and daughter are looking forward to a new year, a new place to call home and a new start in life, with no idea of what will happen to the place they called home for seven years.

"You don't know how happy I am to be employed at the beginning of the year," Matos said. "My new job knows about my bread, they just don't know why I was selling it."